CEO study: Sustainability is critical to success

John Kalkowski -- Packaging Digest, 7/1/2010 3:56:00 PM

In spite of the recent economic downturn, an overwhelming majority of corporate CEOs-93 percent-say sustainability will be critical to the success of their companies. Furthermore, CEOs believe a tipping point could be reached within a decade that fully meshes sustainability with their core business.
These are among the key findings of a survey of 766 CEOs around the globe recently released by the United Nations Global Compact and Accenture. In addition to an online survey, the study included interviews with 50 CEOs.
According to the study, 80 percent of CEOs say the economic downturn has raised the importance of sustainability. As businesses address the financial crisis, sustainability is being recognized as a source of cost efficiencies and revenue growth. Additionally, many companies view sustainability as a critical element in driving growth in new markets.
The survey indicates that in 2010, businesses are taking sustainability more seriously. In a similar 2007 survey, 50 percent of respondents said that sustainability issues had become part of their company's strategy and operations, while that number jumped to 81 percent this year.
CEOs say several conditions must be met before sustainability can be fully integrated into a company's core business, including:
• Shaping consumer tastes to build a stronger market for sustainable products.
• Training management, employees and the next generation of leaders to deal with sustainability issues.
• Communicating with investors to create a better understanding of sustainability's impact.
• Measuring performance on sustainability.
• Working with governments to shape clearer regulation and create a level playing field.
According to the survey, 72 percent of the respondents identified three corporate attributes -brand, trust and reputation-as the primary considerations for acting on sustainability.

Sustainable packaging: Novelis to invest $15 million in aluminum recycling expansion in Brazil

-- Packaging Digest, 5/24/2010 12:04:29 PM
Novelis do Brasil Ltda., a subsidiary of Novelis Inc. announced that it has begun work on a US$15 million expansion of recycling capacity at its integrated aluminum rolling and recycling complex in Pindamonhangaba, Sao Paulo.

The investment will include the addition of two new furnaces and related improvements, which will increase the plant's capacity to recycle used beverage cans and other aluminum scrap by one third to 200,000 metric tons per year. The expansion will allow a nearly 20 percent increase in sheet ingot production to feed the plant's rolling mills. The new equipment is expected to come on stream in the spring of 2011.

"Improving our ability to recycle metal and manage our molten metal flow allows us to increase production of rolling ingot for our mills and reduces the need to purchase ingot from external parties," said Alexandre Almeida, senior vice president of Novelis Inc. and president, Novelis South America. "The overall effect is a more efficient operation to help us respond to our customers' needs."

Novelis is Brazil's leading producer of flat rolled aluminum products and its largest recycler of beverage cans, processing approximately 8 billion cans in 2009. The aluminum can is an environmental success story in a country where the recycling rate is currently estimated at better than 91 percent, placing Brazil among the world leaders in beverage can recycling.

Novelis' assets in Brazil include primary aluminum units in Aratu (BA) and Ouro Preto (MG), aluminum rolling operations in Pindamonhangaba and Santo Andre (SP), and nine hydropower plants located throughout the State of Minas Gerais. For more information on Novelis in Brazil, visit www.novelis.com.br.

SOURCE: Novelis

New study provides life cycle inventory data for recycled PET and HDPE packaging

The National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) announced the release of a new study that provides life cycle inventory (LCI) data for recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic resins. The study’s LCI report indicates that incorporating recycled PET resin in the manufacture of a package significantly reduces the environmental footprint of that package in terms of production energy required and greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is long-sought-after information for companies that want to include environmental sustainability as one of the ways in which they evaluate their product package options,” said Tom Busard, NAPCOR Chairman and VP Global Procurement and Material Systems for Plastipak Packaging. “There’s no true sustainability without recycling, and this new study confirms and quantifies the environmental benefits of recycling PET. We’re seeing more customers requesting LCIs in order to do Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) so that they can more accurately understand the sustainability profiles of their packaging.” LCAs consider the complete life of a product or package, including the raw materials, manufacturing, and end of life.

Dennis Sabourin, NAPCOR Executive Director, added, “This is a scientific approach and provides an excellent tool for making informed decisions.” Sabourin went on to emphasize that the sustainability profile and analysis for the PET package must not only take into account its recyclability, and the increasing use of recycled PET resin content in new packaging, but also PET’s inherent performance characteristics: lightweight; shatter-resistant; safe; able to preserve taste and other product characteristics on-shelf; and its suitability to be made significantly lighter without sacrificing performance for a variety of product applications. Fundamentally, packaging exists in order to effectively deliver a product while preserving that product’s quality in a safe, cost effective, and sustainable manner.

The new LCI study was conducted by Franklin Associates, Ltd. and sponsored jointly by NAPCOR, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR), and the PET Resin Association (PETRA). Using life cycle inventory (LCI) methodology, the study determines and quantifies the energy requirements, solid wastes, and atmospheric and waterborne emissions for the processes required to collect postconsumer PET and HDPE packaging, sort and separate the material, and reprocess it into clean recycled resin.

Based on study results, as well as U.S. EPA and Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, the total amount of PET post consumer containers recycled in 2008, if reclaimed in the U.S., would require approximately 30 trillion Btu less energy than the amount of energy that would be required to produce the equivalent tonnage of virgin PET resin; this is equivalent to the annual energy use of 317,000 U.S. homes. The corresponding savings in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is 1.1 million tons of CO2 equivalents, an amount comparable to taking 189,000 cars off the road. For a single pound of recycled PET flake, the energy use required is reduced by 84%; the GHG emissions, by 71%.1

Sabourin said, “We believe it extremely important for industry to cooperate with government and non-government agencies by using transparent methodologies and peer review protocols. This LCI report is extremely detailed and comprehensive in its scope; it gives our customers – and ultimately the consumer - confidence that they are making decisions based on good information.”

The new study’s findings are captured in “Final Report – Life Cycle Inventory of 100% Postconsumer HDPE and PET Recycled Resin from Postconsumer Containers and Packaging,” which is available on the sponsor organization web sites, including NAPCOR’s PET Sustainability page, http://www.napcor.com/PET/sustainability.html.

Information from the new study will soon be added to the U.S. Life-Cycle Inventory Database. A project of the U.S. Department of Energy and its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), this is a publicly available database that allows users to review and compare analysis results, http://www.nrel.gov/lci/about.html.

Founded in 1987, the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) is the trade association for the PET plastic industry in the United States and Canada. NAPCOR is committed to being the credible voice and champion of the PET packaging industry; to facilitate solutions to PET recycling; and to communicate the benefits of PET as an environmentally sustainable package. www.napcor.com


1. Calculations are based on the volume of clean postconsumer PET flake produced from bottles recovered in the U.S. in 2008 (see http://www.napcor.com/PET/pet_reports.html), and the energy required to collect, sort and domestically reprocess, to flake, the tonnage of plastics containers recovered.

SOURCE: The National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR)